After Father
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Even though he's dead, he can watch over his father...until something gets in the way.


**A/N:** Written for the GX bingo - the non-flash version, #039 - Rick Cobra, and for the Advent Calendar 2014, day 25 - write a gift fic. This fic's for Higuchimon who mentioned a couple of years ago that the fandom needs more Rick love. So here's a little bit for you :D Enjoy!

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 **After Father**

He's supposed to be dead. He is. But that doesn't mean he has to leave his father alone.

He winds up learning a lot more about his father that way, actually. Like how the one cup of coffee he always drank before he left the house is coupled with another when he got to work, and a third during lunch if he's on the base or has access to a cafeteria or cafe at the time. Like how he notes all the subtleties of his students and their inattention, and how he wishes he had a better way of measuring just how much effort they put into their lives and how much they simply wasted away.

It's actually pretty sad to see some of those students. So much potential. So many opportunities. And who knows when they could lose it all: bad luck, getting sick, having an accident - Those students haven't learnt it yet, that life could change in the blink of an eye.

His father knows though. His father knows all too well. He'd lost his entire team early in his army career and left with an orphaned child as a souvenir. And then, simply because the wind had come at the wrong time and Rick hadn't been looking where was going after those cards, he lost that child as well.

He can't see into his father's mind, but he's sure he's thinking about him when he stares at all those children meandering away. He's reminded of the son who never made it to junior high. The other green soldiers from his team who'd gone out on their first assignment and died there. Maybe it went further than that as well. His father never liked talking about the past. But that was okay because they had a good present.

Now it's different, but his father doesn't have anyone to talk to about it all. He's here, always watching, but his father doesn't know. He can't see. There's a plane of existence separating them: life, and death. Maybe sometimes, when he's had enough scotch to be good and drunk, he can see that silhouette hovering over him...or maybe it's just that deep ache, that longing, that makes his name fall from the other's lips along with sparse tears.

And Rick cannot even wipe them away with his pale, transparent, hands. He can only watch. Keep vigil over the man who is still his father, even after death. Even when his father spirals away, to a place that's even more difficult to reach...

And then, on a mission from the army, they're separated again. Separated by a wall of flames, and a shadow on the other side of it.

The wall burns when he tries to touch it. Where he is, though, is cool, so he stays. He can still sort of see his father on the other side. See him busying himself in some new project - and that's a good thing, isn't it? Distracting himself. Finding something to be passionate about. And he can be extra happy because he still remembers, he still says prayers for Rick mutters his name in his sleep.

But there's the wall. And that shadow that's always there with his father, and sometimes he is jealous because that shadow must be a person, right? A live person, that has somehow come under his father's wing and even if they make him happy, that's Rick's place and they're keeping Rick away.

When his father stumbles through the barrier almost right into his arms, he sees how things really are but by then it's far too late.

It's not a person. Not at all. Nothing he's ever seen except the face - his face. And his father, stretching his arms back, calling his name: 'Rick! Rick!'

'I'm here!' Because, surely, in the same plane, they can hear and see each other. They can go back to that happy world of before.

But his father is blind, reaching for the fire and constantly blistering his hands for a Rick that was never there.

And he cries. Because he's closer to his father than he's been since his death - but also so far away.


End file.
